The Voltron Paladins' Guide to Revenge for Dummies
by star.everlasting
Summary: Really, the Galra should have known better than to take her stuff. - Or, Pidge was on a rescue mission, and whomever had hurt her boys, be it the entire Galra army, was going to pay.
1. vengeance: steps 1-4

Hellooooo, Voltron Fandom!

WHAT DID Y'ALL THINK OF SEASON 7?! I'm not done with it yet! Actually, I finished half of it, and I'm finishing the other half tonight (both times with my amazing, completely off-the-wall Voltron-loving friends, Jen and LariaGwyn). I'm so excited. Really. The writers manage to up the ante every single season without fail. Plot holes are addressed, for the most part. EVERY ACTION HAS A CONSEQUENCE. CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT. TEAM BONDING. Ugh I'm bouncing off the walls already in excitement.

So this is the oneshot that's been on my computer since...last year. I eventually decided it should be a two-shot, because it just made more sense to break it up this way. This story is what I wanted my debut into writing for the Voltron fandom to be, not the angsty Keith one I wrote a few months back because of the trauma season 4 put me through.

Ugh. My heart.

Anyway, I hope y'all enjoy this one as much as I enjoyed writing it! Stayed tuned for the second part, and feel free to spazz with me in the comments! :)

 **Disclaimer** : I don't own Voltron

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The Voltron Paladins' Guide to Revenge for Dummies Step 1: Vengeance is best served as a pissed-off smol Green Paladin.

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Oh, quiznak.

Green's cloaking mechanism just had to malfunction at the exact moment Pidge got close to one of the hangar doors of the enormous Galra battleship. In the back of her mind, the Paladin heard a soft whine of apology from her lion before it growled, and she gripped her controls tighter in response. She would need to be extra alert in the next few minutes.

Or hours. It's okay, girl. She sent a comforting nudge to Green, her hazel eyes darting around to look for an opening.

"Pidge! Evasive maneuvers to the ship's tail," Coran instructed. "You're going to have to go through their cargo chute!"

"I'm setting Greenie on autopilot," she said, pushing a few buttons. "She'll drop me off, create a diversion, and then make her way back to the Castle hangar."

"That will leave you on your own!"

Pidge winced at how high-pitched his voice became. "Entering the Castle's coordinates now."

"If they go after her, we'll try to hold them off as best we can," Allura's voice came over the comm. "We've also managed to contact the Blade of Marmora; Kolivan should be on his way to you. Good luck, Pidge."

With a determined nod she knew they could see on-screen, the Green Paladin swerved and doubled back, flying at full speed toward the tail end of the ship where, sure enough, a cargo door was opening.

"Now!" She yelled, thrusters going forward at full blast as she leapt from her seat, Green's jaw opening right when she activated her jetpack and sailed through the door right before it closed. Once the gates were shut and gravity restored, Pidge dropped to the floor with an ungraceful 'oof.' After nearly four years of being a Paladin, she and Green had been through plenty of risky stunts, but this one may take the cake so far for three reasons-

One – By using Green as a distraction, she could potentially lead the Galra straight to the Castle of Lions.

Two – She trusted her lion like her lion trusted her, but there was always the chance that she would be irreparably damaged…which Pidge knew was unlikely, but that slim percentage, because a sentient flying robot lion was still a robot and a mech at the end of the day, made her uneasy nonetheless. "She" being either or her Greenie, both of which made her sick to her stomach at the thought (because, at the end of the day, an Earthling was still a fragile, breakable human being after all).

Three – She usually had one of the other Paladins watching her back. This time, she had no backup whatsoever, which brought her to the reason she was here by herself, waiting for some sort of signal for her to begin.

Pidge was on a rescue mission, and whomever had hurt her boys, be it the entire Galra army, was going to pay.

It started off as a harmless search and rescue of another planet just yesterday, a couple of weeks after celebrating her nineteenth birthday. The Paladins had their hands full, each lion transporting the civilians to the Castle from the Galra's clutches. Pidge had taken the last group in her lion when the Galra forces appeared out of nowhere, flanking the five lions and cornering them on the planet's surface.

"Pidge!" Shiro yelled. "You have to get them out of here!"

"But then we can't form Voltron!" she shot back. Keith's frustration burst in the back of their minds through the Paladin bond, Red breaking from where she was flanking Black in formation to fly in front of Green as one of the Galra ships fired at her. They took the hit, and Blue fired off an icy blast at the in retaliation a moment after.

"Keith!"

"We'll cover you!" Hunk exclaimed, Yellow backing her and Lance up. "Rescuing the civilians comes first!"

Pidge grit her teeth, knowing they were right, and flew off as the others covered her retreat. There were some aboard Green that were panicking so much they were beginning to cry; the sounds of battle didn't help the situation, so against her every instinct, Pidge muted her comm, turning it back on as soon as she landed in the Castle's hangar. Just as she left her passengers to Coran's care, ready to jump back into the fray to help her team, Shiro's voice rang inside her helmet.

"Pidge! Pidge, do you copy?!"

"I'm here! I'm headed over, hang on!" she called, running up the ramp into her lion.

"No! Stay where you are There's too many, they've got us surrounded-"

"I can help!" Pidge yelled, starting Green's launch sequence.

"No, Pidge! You have to stay with Allura and Coran. You're the Castle's first line of defense now. If they get you too, they'll have Voltron! We can't let that happen. We'll get out of here and meet up with you guys later!"

"Shiro, I can-"

"No, Katie! We'll make it out, you guard the Castle!"

Uh-oh. He used her real name. "But I-"

"They've got Keith."

Her blood ran cold. "Keith?" she yelled into the comm. "Keith?! Lance?! Hunk?! Shit, Keith, come on!"

She knew better than anyone, being the other arm of Voltron, just how good of a pilot Keith was. The others may be in awe of his abilities looking outwards, but their bond put her in his place sometimes, where she saw through Red's eyes the raw talent that he had. If he and Red were down and everyone else was overpowered, that was not a good thing.

Shiro was right; they would stand a better chance regrouping without her flying in recklessly. Eventually, they always found a way out. Almost always, anyway. But it was that almost that made Pidge disobey direct orders from her leader and launch a one-woman rescue mission, damn the consequences and what Shiro had to say. Shiro couldn't be disappointed with her or even angry at her if he wasn't alive to do so.

A violent quake pulled her back to the present, grounding her nerves and making her focus. "Pidge!" Allura said in the crackled static of their connection. "The Green Lion has started the diversion. Now's your chance!"

The Paladin looked down at the holographic windows projecting from her arm gauntlet, typing away furiously to hack into the ship's communication channels, and barely flinched when a foreign voice- presumably the ship's commander, as she had tapped right into the bridge- sounded in her helmet.

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The Voltron Paladins' Guide to Revenge for Dummies Step 2: Know that she can hack better than you.

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"The Green Lion! Focus your attacks and bring it down! Once we have it in custody, send a message to Lord Zarkon and tell him we'll be delivering Voltron and all five Paladins to him!"

There wasn't a moment to lose, not with her lion being hunted down. Pidge prayed to whomever was listening that Greenie would be fast enough to outrun the ship and not lead them to Allura and Coran. A faint, slightly annoyed whine in the back of her head from Green made her chuckle softly before her lion's presence faded. Pidge's bioscanner and information from the ship's computer mainframe was still loading, costing her a precious minute as she waited for the results to show. She brought her right thumb up to her mouth before she bit down on the leather of her gloves right where her nail should be, grimacing as she realized she had yet to break that nervous habit when she didn't have her hands full piloting her lion.

Hunk and Keith had called her out on that nervous tick one day in the lounge, and she had all but growled at them every time they brought it up since. She tried switching to playing with her now-longer hair, which came down past her shoulders, whenever it was tied up in a ponytail, but the fingernail biting seemed to win her over every time. She couldn't even fiddle with her glasses anymore; they had been crushed during another mission, and she was forced to put them away- not that she really needed them anyway, but it felt right to have something of her brother's close by.

She really missed having Matt around, especially on a mission where she could definitely use a little help. The Holt siblings made a badass tag team. Unfortunately, the main resistance force of the Voltron coalition had been called to the other side of the universe to intercept a Galra fleet's attempted takeover of Plaxos 3. Pidge knew that if she really had asked, her brother would leave and be by her side in an instant, but she couldn't- she could, and would, handle this on her own.

The blink of the screen on her gauntlet pulled her back into the moment as her information buffered and struggled to load. "Come on, come on…" she muttered impatiently. Immediately, fifteen flashing dots appeared on screen- one of them her, two on two different sides of the ship, two in another area, five in a room some ways away from that, and then five clustered on the bridge. Pidge pinched her nose, squeezing her eyes shut for a moment before pulling up the camera feeds all over the ship to see the sentries make their rounds.

The best thing about dealing with Galra ships? Sentries. They were in no way as creative or as ruthless as commanders in flesh and blood, and programmed only for one purpose.

The worst thing about dealing with Galra ships? Sentries. She had to memorize their patterns each time she encountered them; every ship and every base had a different patrol pattern, and they didn't show up on the bioscanner.

Quietly, she slipped out of the airlock, looking up and down carefully for any approaching figures before breaking into a dead run down the hall toward the closest blinking light. Every time she hit a corner, she had to stop and wait for any signs of approaching sentries before continuing.

Mental note to self: try to hack into the sentries' computer systems. Find out if the sentries have a cloud or hive mind, or if they have to be reprogrammed individually. She was briefly brought back to the mission three years ago at the Galra Universal base where she had tried to hack into a sentry's system, but she had really only scratched the surface of that technology at the time. And then reprogram the damn robots to all just get out of my way and fire at their original programmers. Maybe that's how we can take down the whole Empire at once.

Pidge allowed herself a low, sadistic laugh before peeking around the corner to see that the coast was clear. She was coming up close to the blinking light now, a locked door standing in her way.

"Just a tick..." she muttered, dematerializing her bayard to use her right hand to access controls to the door. It slid open with a hiss, and she wasted no time running through and closing it behind her.

Pidge – 1, Galra – 3.

In the dim room, she made out a shape slumped in against the back wall.

"Who's there?"

She instantly relaxed at the familiar voice, running forward. "Lance!" A light came on from her gauntlet and shot forward for her to see the Blue Paladin, his arms chained to the floor, with dark bruises mottling his cheeks and a gash coated in dried blood on his side clean through the spandex that connected the other pieces of his armor. "Allura, Coran, I've got Lance!"

The Alteans breathed a sigh of relief. "Good work, Number Five!" Coran cheered. "And the Green Lion has returned to the hangar!"

The Green Paladin quickly checked the ship's comm system; someone was pissed that the lion got away. Good. That meant that Coran, Allura, and the Castle weren't in any danger, and she could fully focus on the mission at hand.

"How are you feeling? Can you get up?" Pidge asked Lance, doing a quick med scan before she tried moving him. The scan didn't show anything to be too concerned about, no broken bones or internal injuries. She looked into his eyes; he didn't have a concussion, so there was that going for them. Lance chuckled, his voice strained.

"Whaddya know, Pidgey coming to the rescue."

At any other given moment, she would have kicked him hard in the shin, but she had three other Paladins to find and rescue. "I've rescued you before, maybe I should just leave you here this time," she grumbled half-heartedly, putting an arm around his waist. "Come on, I need to get you out of here so I can get the others and get you guys to your lions. Do you know where Blue is being kept?"

Pidge held her arm out, pulling up a schematic of the ship. Lance's eyebrows furrowed for a moment as he tried to connect with his lion, to pinpoint her exact location as they made their way to the other corner of the room where Lance's helmet and bayard were kept well away from the prisoner.

"There," he murmured, pointing to a spot on the map. Sticking her tongue out the side of her mouth, Pidge quickly found a route to Blue, double-checking the camera feeds for sentries before she helped Lance up. The tall Paladin grunted softly through the pain as he stood, leaning heavily on the smaller girl as the two made their way to the door. She commanded it to open with a single keystroke.

"So, did you actually have a plan?" He asked in a half-whisper.

"Well, not getting caught was the first step," Pidge answered, her ears alert for any sound other than the soft ones they were making. "Then finding you guys, finding your lions, and getting the hell out of here."

Suddenly, he frowned. "Put me down."

"What?"

Lance took his arm off her shoulders, leaning against a wall as he took out his bayard. "Pull up your map." She did as he instructed, watching him mull over the different points her bioscanner. "I couldn't hear much from my cell, but I heard them talking about 'the Champion' and 'the Abomination.'"

Pidge groaned. "Great. Shiro and Keith. Wait, how did they even know Keith was half-G-"

There was a dark look on his face that she had never seen before; it almost scared her as much as his next words did. "They have druids aboard this ship. The druids figured it out as soon as they saw him. That was right before they separated us."

Well, fu-

"Language," Lance automatically quipped without even looking at her, able to read her thoughts. "Here's an idea. I'm going to go ahead and assume that these-" he circled the cluster on the bridge with his finger. "Are whoever's in charge of running this place. And probably whoever's in command of this ship. These," he pointed to the cluster of five dots. "Are probably the druids since they tend to travel in packs. We'll pray that this is Shiro and Keith," he said as he gestured to the two dots. "And this one," he pointed to the lone dot just a few hallways down from him and Pidge. "Is probably Hunk. For the most part, they really just left me alone, so I would assume they did the same to him, if they had both Shiro and Keith for…" his face blanched at this last word. "Experimentation."

The Blue Paladin quickly recovered, shaking his head. "I think we need to split up."

"Split up?!" Pidge almost yelled in surprise. "Are you crazy?! You can barely stand up straight by yo-"

"Exactly," He shut her up by cutting her off, an indignant sqwak coming from the girl. "From the looks of things, Hunk should be unguarded. If we're careful, we could probably get down to our lions and give you distractions. Lay down some cover fire for you to get Shiro and Keith and get out. Where did you park Greenie?"

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The Voltron Paladins' Guide to Revenge for Dummies Step 3: "Let's just wing it" is an appropriate response.

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"That's…actually not a bad plan," Pidge admitted thoughtfully. "And, uh…I didn't 'park' her anywhere," she continued with a sheepish expression on her face at his look of surprise. "I may have setheronautopilotbacktotheCastle." She didn't give him a chance to protest; as soon as he opened his mouth, she kept talking. "Okay. You get Hunk. I'll get the other two, and then I'll let you know when we're in the clear so we can head back to the Castle."

Lance closed his mouth, pressing his lips into a thin line and nodded, about to head down the corridor when she stopped him with a hand on his arm. "Wait, check your comm. When we tried reaching you guys from the Castle, it was all static and nothing went through. We should make sure we have a clear line of communication before you leave."

She really should have seen what was coming- it was Lance she was talking to, and it was that glint in his eyes that caused unpleasant shivers to run down her spine. He grinned before speaking into his helmet. "Ey girl, are you tired? Because you've-"

Pidge hit his arm, not bothering to pull her punches even when he looked at her like a kicked puppy. With only a roll of her eyes, she pointed to the direction he was originally headed and watched him go before looking down at the schematic displayed from her gauntlet.

If she was really, really lucky, she would find Shiro and Keith together in that one holding area with two dots from her bioscanner. If she was really, really, really lucky, then she would find them completely unharmed. She decided not to dwell on that thought too much.

Quietly, she crept down the hallway, stopping at every corner like she did before to check for sentries until she got to the door where her bioscanner was telling her someone was being held, and a few mumbled choice words slipped from under her breath. The room she needed to get into was guarded by four sentries; two standing on opposite sides of the door, and two pacing in front of it in opposite directions.

Think, Katie.

This was in no way her toughest mission, but until Lance could get Hunk and Blue and Yellow and get here in time to give her backup, she was on her own.

"Pidge!" Allura said into her helmet. "We've received transmissions from Lance. Coran's working through the frequency to patch him back into the ship's comms."

She grinned, but then turned serious when she looked back at the pacing sentries. It wasn't that she couldn't take four of them at once thanks to all the training she did and the nightmare routine Keith put her through, but did she really want to give away her position so soon? Now wasn't the time to shoot first; she had to be strategic. Looking back at the screens on her gauntlet, her mind ran ten miles a minute, her fingers on her right hand flying over the small keyboard. Maybe if she could program a malfunction somewhere else in the ship, far from where she was without giving away Lance and Hunk's location…

Pidge thanked every star she could name when the dot on her bioscanner that was supposed to be Lance made it into Hunk's room, having a vocal confirmation just a moment later.

"Pidge?"

"Yeah?" she whispered back.

"I've got Hunk. He's a little worse for wear- come on, buddy- but we're both okay."

Hunk groaned in the background; that was good, that meant he was conscious. She breathed a small sigh of relief.

Pidge – 2, Galra – 2.

"Okay. Allura said Coran's going to fix up the frequencies so that we can all be linked with the Castle comms. I'm right outside the room where Shiro or Keith…hopefully both of them…are, and it's guarded. I'm going to try to set up a diversion, so take that time to get to Blue and Yellow, okay?"

She almost saw his signature smirk when he replied. "On your mark."

"Three…two…" Pidge muttered, hacking her way into the ship's mainframe. "Just a couple of buttons there, a swipe here…and…one."

Sirens began to blare obnoxiously loud as red lights flashed in place of the usual Galra purple. The sentries in the camera feeds on her mini screens and the ones pacing in front of the room did exactly as she hoped they would- they ran toward the false alarm, but to her surprise and frustration, the two standing guard in the doorway didn't budge. She sighed, closing the screens on her gauntlet and drew her bayard, the green tip flashing dangerously. They didn't have a moment's notice before the Green Paladin came out from her hiding place, releasing the hook on her bayard and lassoed it around both sentries. With a hard yank, the robots smashed into one another, and as Pidge retracted the hook, the sharp end sliced deeply into both machines, rendering them useless scrap metal.

"I'm in!" she called as the door slid open.

"And Lance is back online with the Castle's frequency!" Coran exclaimed back.

"Almost to Blue. We'll pick up Yellow and then head your way," the Blue Paladin crowed.

Pidge couldn't help but grin; things were going smoother than she had planned…until said grin dropped as she noticed an enormous Galra commander glaring at her from farther inside the guarded room she had just broken into.

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The Voltron Paladins' Guide to Revenge for Dummies Step 4: Victory or victory, there is no other way (-Keith, probably).

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"Voltron Paladin!" he growled, turning fully to face her. Pidge took her attention off of him for just a tick as she saw a table behind him, and strapped down on the table…

"Shiro!" she yelled. He only seemed to be half-conscious, judging by the way his eyes weren't focusing on her. "What did you do to him?!"

"I did nothing," the commander replied, baring his fangs at her in what looked like an evil sort of grin. "The druids, however, I cannot account for."

Pidge threw him her best glare through her short brown bangs. She had a trick up her sleeve, of course, but with Shiro unprotected with his helmet off, she didn't have a choice. With a loud cry, she launched her bayard hook at him, but he swiftly dodged out of the way. A loud explosion rocked the ship, throwing them both off balance and ripping her bayard from her hands. Seeing that she was defenseless, the Galra launched himself toward her, his right claw slashing through the thin spandex right in between her armor on her side. Pidge stifled a scream as tears immediately blurred her eyes; she hurriedly blinked them away, continuously telling herself that she'd been through worse. Instead, like Keith and Shiro had taught her, she accepted the pain as part of her and continued with the fight, banking on her adrenaline, rolling out of the way just in time as another purple claw came down to shred her to ribbons. She dove for her bayard, barely managing to grab onto it before she rolled onto her back and saw the terrifying sight of the Galra in the air, ready to land on top of her and end her.

Instead, another explosion hit the ship, and he was thrown off-course to the side.

"We've got the lions!" Lance's voice sounded in Pidge's helmet in the precious second she had as the Galra recovered. "Pidge, send me your location!"

The Green Paladin barely had time to transmit her coordinates to him when the Galra came charging at her again. She gripped her bayard tightly before rushing forward head-first toward her enemy, who stopped for just a second in his surprise. That second, after training with Keith and with how hard he was on her when it came to hand-to-hand combat, was all she needed. Her bayard hit home on his shoulder, slashing deeply through muscle and nearly severing his arm. He dropped to his knees with a loud scream, holding his dangling appendix. There was her chance- Pidge ran up and smashed her bayard against his head, knocking him out.

She took a few breaths, trying to wind down from the fight before she approached Shiro, still strapped to the table, and cut through his restraints with her bayard.

"Shiro?" she asked tiredly, her hands moving his face toward her. "Shiro, can you hear me? Guys, I've got Shiro!"

A weak groan answered her, but he didn't show any other signs of having heard what she said. Pidge bit her tongue. She didn't want to resort to this, but if she needed to find Black and Red and Keith, she needed to hurry.

She quickly hooked his hand up to the tech in her gauntlet, accessing its software and typing in a single line of code. Before she hit 'enter', she braced herself and looked apologetically at her leader.

"Sorry, Shiro."

An electric shock tore through Shiro's modified arm, causing the Black Paladin's eyes to snap open and his mouth form an 'o' in pain. Pidge winced at the look on his face, immediately disconnecting his arm.

"Shiro, can you hear me? You there?"

Once he had calmed down from the initial shock, he finally registered her presence.

"Pidge?" he rasped. "What's with the wake-up call?"

"You weren't responsive," she murmured as she looked at the results of her med scanner.

"Well, you could have- wait. What are you doing here?" Shiro demanded weakly, stumbling off the table and leaning on Pidge like Lance had done just a few minutes before. "I thought I told you to-"

"Stay with the Castle, I know," she said, exasperated. She hooked her thumb underneath his belt, being careful to not drop him. The Black Paladin may have been physically incapacitated at the moment, but Pidge had already resigned herself to a Long Talk with him later about following orders- if they got out of there in one piece. "But it was an emergency. You know I can't turn down a good rescue mission."

Her sarcasm drew a breathy laugh out of him. They stumbled a couple of steps over to the shelf next to the table where Shiro picked up his helmet, and Pidge held up her other arm, screen up, for him to see. "Do you know where Black is?"

Like Lance, Shiro studied the ship's schematic, closing his eyes for a brief moment before he brought his hand up, pointing at a spot fairly close by. "He's there."

She nodded. "All right. We'll go get him, and then-"

"No time," he interrupted. "We need to get Keith first."

"…If they had both Shiro and Keith for…experimentation…"

Pidge felt as if someone had just dumped a bucket of cold water over her as Lance's words echoed in her ears. She didn't really want to know the answer, but she had to ask. "Shiro, what did they do to you? Lance told me…"

Her leader grimaced. "Well, the druids wanted to check up on my arm and see if any other enhancements could be made…they basically just electrocuted me a lot," Shiro said, making Pidge's stomach fall through the floor of the ship. She didn't want to have triggered anything when she was trying to shock him back into focus, but he shook his head at the horrified look on her face. "The shock you gave me was much, much more mellow than the ones they did."

Pidge's mouth pressed into a thin line. "That's because they literally just channeled dark magic into your arm," she replied. "I don't think they got to damage the hardware just yet, but I'll double check when we get back to the Castle."

The duo walked out the door after Pidge checked the camera feeds for any incoming sentries. Her heart immediately sank when she realized what, exactly, was going to happen next. Lance and Hunk were out, both alive and in their lions. Shiro was with her, weak, but conscious, and knowing exactly where his lion was. And Keith was right in the heart of enemy territory.


	2. vengeance: steps 5-9

I FINISHED SEASON 7 SATURDAY NIGHT!

IT WAS AMAZING. I am still in awe. There were very few things I disliked about it. AHHHHHHHHHHHHHH still reeling from this incredible show. Thank you, show creators, for something so amazing.

So...I also lied. After writing out the rest of the fic, I decided to create a third chapter (an epilogue), hehehe instead of just 2 chapters. Thanks so much for waiting patiently, guys! Let me know what you thought about season 7 in the comments below; I am always more than happy to chat with y'all! Thank you guys also so much for the support you've shown this fic. You guys are the best.

 **Disclaimer** : I don't own Voltron

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The Voltron Paladins' Guide to Revenge for Dummies Step 5: If you have a Space Dad, use the Space Dad. If you have two Space Dads, use both Space Dads. Space Dads are Best Dads™.

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Pidge bit her lip, thinking hard. The chances of Keith being on the bridge were so slim that she was almost completely certain he was one of the five blinking dots in the small room some ways down the hall. There was no way she could possibly take them all on her own, especially if they were all druids, if Keith wasn't properly protected. However, with Shiro half-alive and no actual backup for her, she knew they had to be dealt with if they wanted to all get out of there in one piece. "All right, Shiro," she said quietly. "Lance told me he thinks this is the druids' lab."

Her mind raced to form a plan. They made their way down the hall as quickly as they could with one of Shiro's arms flung over her shorter form, Pidge half-pulling, half-dragging him along. Without the adrenaline of fighting an enormous Galra commander, however, Pidge's slashed side started to burn, and the bruises she sustained from the fight began to ache. She grunted in pain, and had to gasp as she felt blood seep through her spandex and armor. Shiro didn't miss a beat.

"What happened?!"

They stopped in the middle of the hallway before Pidge could tell him it was a bad idea; sentries could come along at any moment, and their position was the least possible defensible spot, with nothing to give them cover and leaving them wide open for enemy attack. "It's nothing. I just- from that fight earlier. I'm okay. The wound isn't deep."

Her leader frowned as he eyed her wound. She was right; it wasn't a deep wound, but the slash was deep enough in her side for concern. The blood wasn't stopping, though thankfully, it was a slower flow than he originally feared. Shiro's brow furrowed, but he knew they had to keep moving.

"Pidge," he suddenly said after another minute, thinking of the best way to rescue Keith. "Can you get into the ship's system and shut down the lights in the room? Maybe that way, we can pre-empt them and have a bit of an edge."

The Green Paladin couldn't help her smug grin as they approached the door of the lab. "Already done. I can cut them off with one button." She reached for something on her belt. "Here. I have a few cans of space spray that Coran bartered last time we made that pit stop at the space mall," she said as she pulled out a round object and held it up to his face. "You know, the last visit where Lance and I managed to not adopt another cow. Not like we need another one anyway, I'm pretty sure the mice adopted Kaltenecker and that's why we haven't seen him in a few weeks-"

The look on Shiro's face cut her off; he gave her that expression every time she started rambling. Pidge cleared her throat.

"Space…spray?"

"Yeah…apparently, this stuff is pretty strong. It's ground scaultrite crystals mixed with Weeblum acid."

Shiro winced as she frowned.

"But I can't do anything with the spray if Keith doesn't have his helmet on to protect him from it. The particles travel far too quickly, and are too dangerous to allow into your eyes, nose, and mouth. It would be excruciating."

Neither of them mentioned that with Pidge's open wound, it would be exceedingly painful for her as well. She pushed that thought out of her head; Keith needed them, now was not the time to be contemplating her own injuries. Pidge needed to get them all out of there and back to the Castle. It was pure luck that right at that moment, the ship rocked with another giant explosion, throwing both Paladins off their feet and slamming them into the wall, both letting out groans of pain; it may have been just the diversion they needed to lure the druids out of the room, making it that much easier do a sweep and see if Keith was inside. The hacked comms broadcasted the bridge officers' and the ship commander's furious exchange inside Pidge's helmet.

"Auxiliary systems have been hit! We need to take those lions down _now_!"

"Sir, auxiliary systems holding at 80%!"

"You incompetent fools! How did those Paladins escape?! The lions do not fly themselves!"

Pidge made a mental note to thank Lance later- he may be a pain in her rear some days, but when it came down to it, he was a sharpshooter who had their backs. The door right in front of them hissed open, and she and Shiro found themselves face to face with a druid who stared at them in shock through its mask. She must be really lucky today; the door slid shut almost immediately afterwards, and the druid hadn't called for reinforcements. Maybe it thought it could handle two injured Paladins of Voltron on its own.

Glancing over at Shiro, she took stock of his external injuries and immediately knew there was no way he could fight it. It would be up to her. Brandishing her bayard, Pidge braced herself…only to flinch when the druid suddenly lurched forward and fell over, revealing Kolivan standing behind it with a bloody blade in his hand. The Black Paladin let out a chuckle.

"Good to see you."

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The Voltron Paladins' Guide to Revenge for Dummies Step 6: Always remember, The Blade is watching you.

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The Galra nodded once at him, twirling his blade between his fingers. "Plan?" he asked, getting right down to business. Keith was, after all, still part of the Blade, and stoic as he may seem, Kolivan worried about every last one of them.

Shiro gestured to Pidge. "Her mission. Her call."

Kolivan focused his gaze on her; she pulled up the bioscanner on her gauntlet as she explained her idea. "I think Keith is in here," she said, gesturing to the door in front of them. "And that there are three druids in there with him." Pidge pointed to the blinking dots. "I've got some space spray that will hopefully, _hopefully_ incapacitate the druids, which will allow us to take them down. However, I can't use it if Keith is unprotected. I mean, if he doesn't have his helmet on. That's where we come in. You and I can act as distractions while Shiro scopes the room and covers Keith. On his signal, after it's safe, I'll throw the space spray and it'll blow like a grenade."

The Galra's eyes flicked over to Shiro, and a look of understanding passed between the two before he looked back at Pidge. "Shiro and I should act as distractions," he told her. "You have more mobility, so you'll be able to get to the Red Paladin faster."

"Since you can manually lock and unlock the door, cut off the lights and then we can run in. You lock the door behind us and hide in the shadows so you can get to Keith while Kolivan and I hold them off, and then you pop the spray," Shiro added.

Pidge frowned, clearly not liking the idea. She could see the logic of it, but with Shiro so out of it-

"It'll be okay," he said, elbowing her gently as he saw the look on her face. "We need to get to Keith."

The mention of Keith's name immediately brought Pidge back to attention, her eyes hardening. Shiro was worried about his brother, and if it was Matt in there, Pidge knew she would have already blown up at whoever stood in her way to get him back.

"Right," she replied, nodding. She took a deep breath, and after making sure Kolivan had his mask on, pressed the button that shut off the lights in the room and then the button to open the door just a half second later. Both leaders sprang into action, running inside just as three druids turned toward them with only a moment's notice before they were ambushed. Seeing that they were preoccupied with fighting off Shiro and Kolivan, Pidge ran along the perimeter of the room within the dark shadows that painted the wall, praying that the druids wouldn't notice her as she broke out of the darkness and approached the lone figure on the table in the middle of the room.

It was a horrifying sight.

Bruises and cuts of all shapes and sizes marred his face, and one of his eyes were so swollen she doubted it would open anytime soon. His normally fair skin was almost pallid, as if all blood had been drained. What scared her the most was that his virtually-indestructible armor was cracked in random places, and even through her helmet, Pidge could smell something burning as she got close. They had burned him too, electrocuted him, tortured him, _experimented_ on him, the half-Galra, half-human, trying to glean as much information out of him as they could, be it about Voltron or in the name of science.

She felt sick to her stomach, her eyes blurring as she forcefully blinked the water away. Luckily, Keith's helmet was on the table next to him, and she carefully, quickly put it on him before whipping out two cans of the space spray on her belt. Another small consolation- Keith was out cold, and Pidge hoped that it would stay that way. With his open wounds, the particles from the spray would be _excruciating_. She readied herself for the pain, praying that the adrenaline and shock would keep her moving, and threw them to the middle of the room without warning, watching as they created a mini-explosion of what was essentially an immensely powerful pepper spray.

Shiro and Kolivan were unscathed, protected, but the druids weren't so lucky. None of them had ever heard a druid scream until that point, and none of them ever wanted to hear it again. It sounded like nails on a chalkboard, screeching sharply as they made their way down slowly, painfully, agonizingly. It reminded Pidge of tree branches scraping against a glass window, of rusty mechanics grinding and wheezing against each other; it made her shudder and goosebumps rise on her skin even underneath her insulated armor. There was no time to stop, however. She readied her bayard and cut through the bonds that tied Keith to the table as Shiro ran over and hauled his brother off, then the small group made a run for it out the door.

There wasn't a moment to lose, but not a second after coming into contact with the cloud of dust that had exploded from the spray, Pidge's vision went white from the pain in her side. She bit down hard on the inside of her cheeks and tasted blood, and the feeling of huge arms that helped guide her out of the room reminded her that she needed to thank Kolivan later for getting her out.

As soon as they were clear, Pidge blinked rapidly, expelling her tears as fast as she could. Her mind fought to clear itself, to fight through the pain and to focus on the mission on hand. She shut and locked the door with a few swift keystrokes, ensuring their escape from the now-incapacitated druids, and then Kolivan was hauling her through the ship again until her side stopped burning like it had come in contact with an open fire. The ragtag group of four (two, really, what with Shiro throwing a completely unconscious Keith over his shoulder and Kolivan basically dragging Pidge) ran down the hallway towards the left, Shiro allowing his bond with the Black Lion to guide him through the ship. Suddenly, an idea popped into the Green Paladin's head, causing her slip from the Blade's grip to make a hard stop. She grunted in pain as her side stretched, but there was no _time_ to pay attention to it.

"Pidge! Pidge! _Katie_ , _what are you doing_?!" Shiro almost roared, grunting as he shouldered Keith's dead weight on his right side. Pidge pressed a few more buttons on her gauntlet.

"Get to Black, I'll meet you where they have Red!" She yelled, not bothering to explain herself as she tore down a different hallway toward the bridge.

"Pidge, you don't even know where-"

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The Voltron Paladins' Guide to Revenge for Dummies Step 7: Revenge is a one-track mind.

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She completely ignored the shouts that sounded behind her, only one thought driving her forward.

The Galra took her friends, and then they tortured them. It was too small a price to pay, too small of an _involuntary_ penance, but since they thought it was okay to take her friends, then Pidge thought it was completely justified for her to steal their stuff. 'Stuff', of course, being their ship, and if everything went according to plan, then she would deliver this ship and its entire crew to the Blade of Marmora to do as they wished.

Penance. Ha. Penance, meet Pidge.

As soon as she reached the bridge, she didn't hesitate. She opened the door via her gauntlet and ran right into the middle of the fray; the Galra ship commander and every other tech in there barely registered their shock at seeing the Green Paladin of Voltron burst angrily right into the heart of enemy territory. "Inform Lord Zarkon-" the commander started to say, a nasty sneer growing on her feline face before Pidge took out the last of her cans of space spray and threw them down on the floor, hard. She barely had enough time to whip out her bayard and shoot the hooked point past the open door to the bridge, hauling herself out and closing the door before the scaultrite and Weeblum acid mixture went _everywhere_. Panting, Pidge leaned against the side of the door and held her aching side, breathing through her nose and out her mouth.

It was almost too easy. Each of the Galra was immediately affected by the spray, having no protection from the relentless acidic dust that burned their eyes and tore its way down their throats. She timed it, and only unlocked the door and went back onto the bridge exactly three minutes after the explosion, enough time for the dust to settle- for the most part. For a moment, Pidge considered knocking them unconscious to make sure that they wouldn't be able to sound any alarms or stop her from doing her work, but she retracted her bayard at the last minute, holding it against her chest. Rendering them unconscious would be a mercy at this point.

She quickly stashed her bayard and made her way to the computer mainframe on the bridge, establishing contact with Allura and Coran via the comms in her helmet.

"Pidge to the Castle. Allura? Coran? Can you hear me?" Pidge asked as she typed with both hands, fingers flying. First to shut down their communications, then to reroute all power to auxiliary systems…the main lights switched off, and the emergency lights immediately lit up in a bright purple color around the room. Then to implement her own nifty little lockdown system and firewall, making it nearly impossible to hack if one of the Galra got lucky enough to get up from the space spray blast before they reached the Blade of Marmora headquarters and tried to send out an SOS. Those unlucky enough to attempt to bypass her software would get her floating, gloating head on screen, her favorite retaliatory prank.

"Number Five!" Coran's excited voice broke through the connection. "We have confirmed visuals on the Blue and Yellow Lions!"

"Where are Shiro and Keith?" Hunk asked via Voltron's internal comms, his voice heavy with fatigue and worry. She so wished she could answer him, but there was no time, and she still had to find out where they put Red. Shiro could hear him though, she knew. Shiro could deal with it whenever he reached Black. It was perfect timing that their leader's voice rang out then, loud and clear.

"We've got Black! Pidge, where are you?!"

Lance's startled voice cut through the comms. "Pidge isn't with you?"

The youngest Paladin resisted the urge to roll her eyes, trying to concentrate on what she was doing. "I'll meet you guys when you find Red," she told them. "I've got her location here. Transmitting info to Black now."

She was so immensely glad she took the time to memorize each of the lions' complicated base codes, allowing her to upload information to each of their softwares and update them remotely. It also allowed her to lock on to their short-range locations, which proved to come in handy on multiple occasions. Two big worries crossed off her list- Shiro, Keith, and Kolivan were safe, and they were on their way to pick up the final lion. She bit down on her lip, quickly relaying her instructions.

"Allura, I've shut down all systems on this ship, including the navigation and engine. I'm going to send you the base code; I need you to take that and use your powers to create a tether strong enough to pull this ship into a wormhole with the Castle. Is that possible?"

Pidge could almost _hear_ Allura's frown through the comms, but after years of fighting together, the trust that was built between them stopped the Princess from wasting time in doubting her teammate. "Yes," she replied firmly. "Where are we going?"

One more keystroke, and pressing enter, Pidge allowed herself to relax a little. "Blade of Marmora headquarters."

"Base code received!" Coran reported.

She erased all the metadata footprints she left in the system, and did a final, complete shutdown of all systems save for the auxiliary. Tossing one last look at the Galra now writhing on the floor in pain, she closed the computer and ran out of the bridge holding her side with her left hand, pulling up the map to Red's location on her gauntlet with her right as she went. Her boots pounded on the metal floor, and Pidge could feel the sweat rolling down her cheeks. Just a few more steps…

She burst through the hangar door to see the lion with its particle barrier up, and Pidge allowed herself a half-hearted laugh of relief. As soon as her hand touched the barrier, Red immediately let down her defenses, powering up and allowing the Green Paladin on board.

"I've got Red!" she yelled into the comms. "Thanks, girl," Pidge then murmured as she made her way to the cockpit. "I know I'm not Keith, but thanks for letting me in."

Red's roar sounded in the back of her head, her connection to the Paladin weaker than Green's, but she was there and ready to go. That was another problem, Pidge realized: she wasn't sure she could fly Red. Shiro, it appeared, had impeccable timing.

"Pidge, are you inside the Red Lion?" he asked, an explosion rocking the hangar. Pidge held on tight to the control levers.

"Yes!"

"Can you fly her?"

Well, that was the million-dollar question, isn't it?

"No!"

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The Voltron Paladins' Guide to Revenge for Dummies Step 8: Don't piss off the lions.

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The Red Lion was just too fast, too temperamental, and too unpredictable; Pidge was a steady pilot who relied more on her skill than instinct, and being in control of the most volatile of the five lions meant she wouldn't be able to fly her well enough to get them both out of danger and Galra clutches, if any reinforcements showed up. Suddenly, the outer hangar wall was forcefully blasted off, revealing the growling Black Lion. Before Pidge or Red could do anything, Black's jaw opened wide and scruffed- literally scruffed- Red, pulling the lion out of the hangar with a yelling Pidge inside the cockpit and out into open space, where they flew into the waiting Castle of Lions.

The next several minutes were a blur. Lance and Hunk were the first to dock their lions, running out to Black's hangar to meet her, Shiro, Keith, and Kolivan. Instead of taking Red back to her own hangar, Black stubbornly held on until both lions were in his hangar, barely having enough room. Two enormous robot lions, two Alteans, one Galra, three humans, and one human-Galra hybrid later, the hangar was, quite literally, packed as Pidge made her way out of Red and Shiro and Kolivan both exited Black, Keith held between them by the arms. Coran had a stretcher in no time, and somehow managed to coax all of them (save Kolivan and Pidge) into following him down to the pods.

Allura seized her chance. "Pidge, why are we at the Blade headquarters? It doesn't sound like you're just dropping Kolivan off."

The Green Paladin tiredly leaned against the worktable next to her, ripping off her helmet and shrugging her shoulder-length hair tied in a ponytail free from its sweaty confines. She had nearly forgotten, having been so worried about Keith and the others, to tell Allura what her plan actually was. Pidge ran a gloved hand through her sweat-slicked hair, a lazy smile appearing on her lips.

"I'm here to make a delivery, of course," she said, and winked as she turned to Kolivan. "Thanks for all your help in recovering my teammates. In return, I give you one fully functional Galra spaceship to experiment or use as you please, and a fully-incapacitated crew to question and or exhaust their uses, whatever they may be."

Allura's mouth nearly dropped open, and though Pidge was beyond exhausted, she saw a slight quirk at the corner of Kolivan's lips, the only sign she found that let her know he was amused by her antics.

"Thank you for your generous donation," he replied. "I've contacted the Blade, and there should be a small squad coming to meet us and capture the prisoners onboard."

The Green Paladin swept into a low bow and followed the others down to the pods.

* * *

The mission was over. She could breathe again.

Shiro and Coran practically pushed her into a pod after seeing her injuries, but Pidge had enough time to glance at a clock before she was overtaken by sleep to know she only spent about one varga inside to recover. Allura was in front of her when she woke up, guiding the disoriented Paladin to the lounge at her request. It was only a few more minutes later that Pidge regained full consciousness, leaving the exasperated Princess behind as she sprinted back into the med bay.

Coran shooed Pidge out of the med bay as soon as she stepped one foot into the room, promising to let her know if there were any changes in their conditions and for her to _please_ at least take a shower. She took one whiff of herself and her nose scrunched up in disgust. Sighing, she made the walk back to her own room and managed to not fall over from fatigue under the soothing, warm running water. The shower did her good though; with the grime and sweat and blood washed off, she felt like a new person- an achy one at that, but at least she could collapse into a proper bed as soon as she knew the others were okay.

Pidge made her way back to the thankfully-empty med bay and plopped down on the couch identical to the one in the lounge that was installed in the room after the first time Lance had to be put in one of the pods. She played with one of the glass tablets on the table in front of her that was hooked up to the Castle's system, mindlessly typing out line after line of useless code to get her brain kickstarted. The shower had woken her up a little as it refreshed her, but she could feel sleep thundering at its heels…she really needed something to occupy her mind with, to fight off the sleep that was ready to pounce at any moment until her boys were all healed and out of the pods. It was almost funny, when she thought about it, how they had created an unspoken pact over the years: no one woke up from a pod alone. There would always be at least one person waiting for whomever was in the pod until they recovered, knowing the incredibly disorienting feeling of stepping out of those things, the confusion of having been in battle and then flung back to safety.

Lance and Hunk were in there for three vargas each. Their pods' beeps woke Pidge up from where she succumbed to sleep, the Paladin acting on auto-pilot as she rubbed her eyes and grabbed two fluffy blankets, courtesy of her and Lance. They always came out with one fluffy blanket as a memento of sorts every time they visited an alien bazaar, which meant that, by now, they had a small collection that was strewn about the castle lounges and med bay. Still out of it, it took Pidge a moment to realize that a blanket had been laid on top of her while she was out, and that Shiro was right there catch Hunk as she managed to keep Lance from faceplanting on the floor. She tossed him one of the blankets and they immediately wrapped their still-mostly-unconscious friends in them, then guided them to the enormous round couch they just vacated.

"Am I correct in assuming you didn't hop into one of those pods?" Pidge asked Shiro quietly, who chuckled.

"I'm fine. Just need to make sure everything in this arm works, and just need to get some sleep."

She sighed. "I'm just surprised Coran let you get away with it."

"Well, Allura put up a fight. Honestly," he replied after a moment. "I just got really lucky. They didn't…torture me much, really."

"Okay, when I found you, you could barely walk on your own," she grumbled. "You should have spent at least a few minutes in there just to make sure!"

Shiro didn't get a chance to respond; Lance groaned, shifting in his sleep as he and Hunk came to, with the latter blinking his eyes open first.

"Wha- what time is it?" he croaked, throat dry. Shiro had a bottle of water ready and uncapped for him in one hand, and another bottle for Lance in the other. Pidge helped him sit up, and Lance nodded gratefully as he slowly downed the water.

"It's a little past 3 in the morning," Pidge replied, her voice still raspy with sleep. "You two are the first ones awake."

Four pairs of eyes slowly turned toward the pods to see their fifth Paladin, still suspended in the water as the combination of tech and magic healed his broken body.

"Anyone know how long he'll be in there for?" Hunk asked, not really expecting an answer. Which was just as well, because between his injuries and his half-human, half-Galra body, no one actually knew. It could be vargas. It could be days.

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The Voltron Paladins' Guide to Revenge for Dummies Step 9: Friendship is magic ("Lance, we are not listing that-" "MY LITTLE PONY IS A GREAT SHOW.").

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It was warm. It was so, so warm, and it was so, so comfortable. He was weightless.

And then everything hit all at once; every bone started to ache, a deep weariness setting in as the warrior in him fought to awaken. Everything in him felt so _heavy_ , weighing him down to the core. The waters around him receded, a hiss sounded, and then all of a sudden, there was light. There was air. There was movement. There was something soft underneath him.

"Keith?"

He knew that voice. He trusted it implicitly, no questions asked. Keith tried to form words, tried to say his brother's name, but he couldn't get his voice to work. He struggled against the weight that threatened to pull him under again, succeeding as the piercing light hit his amethyst eyes and blurry shapes appeared, hovering above him.

"Keith?"

Words. He had to make words.

"Nnnnnghhhhhh."

 _Good going, Kogane. Very graceful. Try again_.

"Keith? It's okay. You're okay now." That was Pidge. He could hear the concern in her unusually-soft tone, reserved only for those quiet moments she spent on the observation deck or curled up under a blanket with them during a late night where none of them could sleep.

"Hang in there, buddy," Lance added.

He felt a large hand on his arm. "We've got you," Hunk said.

There was another hissing sound somewhere in the distance, and Coran's very distinct accent filled the air. "Oh! Is Number Four awake?"

"Keith!" Allura's high-pitched voice sounded in delight somewhere farther to his right.

That was all the encouragement he needed- his team, his family, was around him, waiting for him to fully wake up. Valiantly, Keith blinked a few times, forcing his vision to focus. As his world slowly came back into view, he allowed a lazy half-smile to slip onto his lips.

"Hi," he rasped.

Everyone around him seemed to let out a huge breath of air, reluctant smiles appearing on their faces. Keith tried to sit up but instantly felt the room spin, felt the weariness in his bones just as he did in the pod moments before.

"Take it easy," Shiro said softly as he flopped back onto the couch, letting out a grunt of pain.

"Are you hurting anywhere?" Pidge quickly asked, worried. Keith took a few deep breaths before slapping on his most reassuring smile, trying to assuage her fears.

"I'm fine." Blowing out a breath, he decided against trying to sit up again. "How long was I out for?"

"Well…" Hunk started, twiddling his thumbs. Keith raised an eyebrow at his hesitance.

"What Hunk is trying to say," Allura hurriedly cut in. "Is that he and Lance were only in the pods for three vargas after you all returned. It's been around fifteen vargas now."

The Red Paladin's eyes flew open. "Fifteen?!" he almost squeaked. "That's crazy!"

The longest any of them had been in a pod was Lance, clocking in at around eight hours after getting caught in an explosion on a mission the year before. Now, Keith practically doubled his time. That- that was not a good thing. His head hurt, his body ached, and he wanted answers.

"How did we get out of there?" he asked, fighting against the drumbeat in his head. "The last thing I remember…the druids…"

Everyone let out a small laugh then, and Pidge looked down, almost shy. "It's all thanks to Pidge," Lance said. "We can tell you the story later now that we know for sure you're not going to die."

Despite the big grins on everyone's faces and his own yearning to stay awake, Keith never felt more content, surrounded by his family, as he drifted off again.

* * *

It was dark when he next awoke in his room, the clock just above his bed reading 5:23 am. Keith stretched languidly, his muscles still feeling stiff and sore, his spine and every other bone cracking from him staying in the same position for hours on end. Though the weariness persisted, his body was no longer screaming at him to rest- instead, it craved movement, pushing past his heavy bones for him to get up and stretch some more before taking a shower, probably his first since their search-and-rescue mission before he, Lance, Hunk, and Shiro were captured. It seemed like so long ago. He would need to check a calendar and see how long, exactly, it had been since then.

Keith wrinkled his nose; he'd have to throw his sheets into the wash sometime later, and he would need fresh clothes. The steaming water from the shower helped wake him up some more, the temperature and constant stream soothing his tired body and making him feel more relaxed than he had since…forever. Images of his time at the druids' hands came rushing back to him, and he flinched involuntarily in the shower as his breath picked up, heart hammered in his chest, and a very acute flash of fear made him lean against the wall, the water beating on his muscled back, as he repeated a single phrase to himself.

 _I'm home. I'm home. I'm home_.

He closed his eyes and took a deep breath before turning the water off and toweled himself dry, pulling on a fresh set of clothes- his trusty gray t-shirt, comfortable black sweatpants, and the well-worn red hoodie that Hunk and Pidge had insisted on getting for his birthday a couple of years back after Shiro "accidentally" told them when it was (where they managed to find a red hoodie with cat ears on the hood _in space_ was beyond him). Needless to say, and he really never said it out loud, but Keith loved it. He wore it around the Castle constantly, wearing his own red jacket (that was surprisingly still intact after all it had been through with him) only when visiting new planets and meeting new people and aliens. It was like his shield, whereas the red hoodie symbolized the complete letdown of his guard.

Red picked up on that fact real fast, her purr of approval rumbling through their bond every time he walked into the hangar with the hoodie on. Now, the worn material provided a familiar, calming sense of comfort, the sense that he was _really_ home, as he walked out of his room. He would have been up around this time every other day and would have been training until breakfast, but in his current state, his team would make a ruckus if someone found out. His body was already reprimanding him for more rest, despite the cabin fever he was already feeling. So was his lion, there in the back of his head- his apparent lack of self-wellness irritated her to no end, and Keith let out a small chuckle as he made his way to the observation deck instead.

Keith couldn't remember a time where he didn't find comfort looking up at the stars. He thought of early childhood memories of laying down on the roof of their little house with his father late at night, his father teaching him all about the constellations he knew. There would be stories upon stories of his mother, stories with details that he couldn't remember, but his father always looked up at the stars as he told them. Back then, little Keith dreamed he could fly- a dream that was shattered when his father died a hero in the flames.

It wasn't until after meeting Shiro, after proving himself as the best pilot of his generation, did that dream come back to life again, dying once more after Shiro's disappearance during the Kerberos mission with Commander Sam and Matt Holt. Then came the Blue Lion, and Keith thought with a small chuckle that no matter where he was, no matter how far he ran, the stars caught up to him in the end, pulled him into an intergalactic war on the other side of the galaxy. They were his constant, and he sought peace from them, just like he had intended on doing until he saw a lone figure curled up in a blanket on the floor of the observation deck. His eyebrow quirked up, walking closer before he realized that the small, sleeping person was Pidge.

The observation deck was their refuge. There was no other way to describe the room that the Paladins had thrown pillows and fluffy blankets and all manners of alien stuffed animals (thanks, Lance) into. It was the room they went to after a long mission, the room they went to after a hard mission, after having their hearts shattered by one reason or another in the wide, cruel universe. Pidge had spent so much time in there before finding Matt and her father, and Keith himself clocked in hours upon hours of quiet solitude.

She must have been exhausted. Grabbing another blanket, he made sure she was completely covered up before he relaxed against several other big cushions just a few feet away, throwing the blanket over his feet as he looked out at the vastness of space. For all the combative perks his Galra genes gave him, Keith found that they also made his feet perpetually cold when he wasn't exercising, training, or fighting. It annoyed him to no end, but the fuzzy socks that Hunk managed to find him made his irritation recede just a bit. No one could be uncheered by fuzzy socks. He could feel a slight rumble in his chest, knowing that the Galra in him was purring in approval.

He stayed there for a long while, the watch hidden underneath the sleeve of his hoodie reading 6:42am when Pidge finally stirred.

"Good morning," Keith greeted her, watching her facial expression go from completely drowsy to immediately alert as she became aware of his presence.

"Keith!" She squawked, her chest heaving from the scream she bit back. "Don't _do_ that!"

He chuckled. "Sorry. Didn't want to wake you up earlier."

Pidge took a moment to calm down from the shock, chucking a pillow at his face a second later. "How are you feeling?"

"Better." Keith stretched out, hearing his spine crack a little, and she did the same. "So…what happened?"

The door to the observation deck slid open, and Lance shambled in with his blue bathroom and what both Paladins in the room knew by now, after years of living with each other, was a new sheet of his "morning special" face mask. "Blue woke me up at the crack of dawn to come hang out with you two instead of sleeping?!" He grumbled, making his way to and collapsing against another nest of cushions. It was barely a minute after that Hunk entered the room as well, rubbing the sleep from his eyes.

"Yellow told me there was a team meeting."

Keith and Pidge looked at each other, and they burst out laughing.


	3. vengeance: step 10

IT'S DONE! After months of deliberation and long periods of not touching this fic followed by a crazed phase of writing and editing, this fic is complete!

Thank you all so much for your support, it really means a whole lot to me :) feel free to leave me a comment to spazz out about how awesome these little babies are or to talk about this show or life in general! Or message me on tumblr at finalfantasyx.

Special mentions to **Gravtron1** , **RedArrowisSuperCool** , **KeithKogane1** , **ChocolateMonkey19** , and **Star-The-Writer**. And the anon who left a review, all of you guys made me smile :)

Again, thank you guys so much! I hope you enjoyed this fic as I much as I enjoyed writing it!

 **Disclaimer** : I don't own Voltron

* * *

Keith didn't get his story until breakfast. All four of the younger Paladins ended up falling asleep once more, and though they never said it out loud, all of them slept easier knowing that the others were okay. Coran said over the breakfast table later on that morning he and Allura had tried to wake them up as Shiro didn't have the heart to, but eventually had to resort to using the mice in a very creative way (a way which none of them ever wanted a repeat performance of).

"You should have seen her, really. She marched right down to Coran's supply room and came out with these things all attached to her belt and ready to go," Allura said over her bowl of food goo.

"But the refugees were still onboard, and everyone was terrified," Coran continued. "With all the other Paladins and lions captured, there was a mass panic."

"I would have gotten to you sooner," Pidge told them, apologetic. "I'm sorry."

Hunk put his hand on top of her head. "Don't apologize!"

"Anyway," Allura picked up the story again. "Pidge had to do some massive damage control. We couldn't leave them in the care of the Rebels either, most of them were in the Taleros system trying to fight an invasion on Plaxos 3. We eventually decided to drop them off with the Olkari, after Ryner told us to bring them."

"Then we had to figure out how to track you guys down. The base code tracking method doesn't work over long-range distances," Pidge said. "It took a little bit of bartering, some intergalactic travel, and a restless couple of days, but Coran and I managed to track down some rumors that were later confirmed by several of the Blade. That's how we roped Kolivan into it."

"And once we were in range of this rumored ship, Number Five used the lions' base codes to confirm your location," Coran recounted. "And launched a one-woman suicidal mission to rescue all of you."

" _WHAT?!_ "

 _The Voltron Paladins' Guide to Revenge for Dummies Step 10: Don't forget about the Mom Friend._

Everyone whipped their heads toward the new voice, Shiro's arm lit up and all bayards materialized immediately before they saw Matt Holt standing in the doorway of the dining room. Lance sighed, slumping back into his chair. "Don't just scare us like that!"

Pidge's face fell into her hands as she groaned. She would never hear the end of it from her brother.

"What do you mean _suicidal mission_? I get an emergency transmission from The Blade of Marmora saying the Paladins of Voltron needed me and _this_ is what I come back to?!"

She made a mental note to have A Talk™ with Kolivan later about emergency transmissions. It had _not_ been an emergency.

Well, it kind of _was_ , but she handled it just fine on her own! "It wasn't an emergency," she grumbled. Matt ran over to his sister, grabbing her face and checking her over for injuries before she swatted him away. "I'm fine! It's Keith and Shiro you should be worried about."

The older Holt narrowed his eyes at his other friends, but Coran began talking again before he could start ranting at them as well. If Shiro was their space dad, Matt was definitely the shitposting mom friend.

"So with confirmed locations, a handful of scaultrite spray, and a half-baked plan, Pidge ran into her lion to rescue all of you."

"I was careful!" Pidge exclaimed. "I did my research, I did my hacking, I monitored everything, _and then_ I got all of you out! Lance, back me up!"

"She did rescue me first, though I agree with Coran- her plan was pretty basic," he said, ignoring her indignant glare.

" _You_ were the one who wanted to go off on your own to get Hunk! I said we should have gone together!"

"Yeah, but then you got to Shiro in record time, didn't you?"

"She did," Shiro confirmed with a nod. "And I didn't miss that Galra bleeding out on the floor, Pidge. She knocked him out and got injured in the process. The wound was clean through her armor too."

Pidge buried her face in her hands. It was pointless to try to correct him, Matt would freak out either way.

"Then Lance found me, and we got to our lions," Hunk continued the story. "We were able to lay down some cover fire and distractions around the ship before we flew back to the Castle."

"Kolivan showed up after that," Shiro said. "And we managed to take down the druids and recover Keith and the Black Lion. Don't think I wasn't paying attention just because I had to carry Keith, I saw Kolivan practically dragging you to Black. Pidge ran back out on her own though, injured and in pain from the spray since she had an open wound."

Shiro was just digging the hole deeper, Pidge was sure of it. She sent him a dirty look from between her fingers. Ignoring Matt's horrified face and the shock on the other Paladins', Allura cheerfully picked up where he left off. "She made it to the bridge and, I assume, took down everyone in there, since she contacted us to establish an inter-ship tether so we could bring the ship with us to the Blade headquarters. And _then_ , she told Kolivan she was donating the ship and the entire incapacitated crew to the Blade for research!"

Keith and Lance roared with laughter. "Nice work, Pidge!" Keith exclaimed, throwing an arm on the back of her chair. Hunk gave her a thumbs-up from across the table, but Matt slumped to the floor in a heap.

"Not that I'm not proud of you, Pidge…" he started, making Katie brace herself for what was coming next. "But Mom would _kill_ me if she knew any of this happened."


End file.
